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From: alderson@netcom12.netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Subject: Re: Grimm's law for other languages
In-Reply-To: Graham Mezzarobba's message of Thu, 20 Jun 1996 00:30:35 -0600
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References: <Pine.A32.3.92.960620000810.82582G-100000@acs2.acs.ucalgary.ca>
Date: Fri, 21 Jun 1996 16:43:25 GMT
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In article <Pine.A32.3.92.960620000810.82582G-100000@acs2.acs.ucalgary.ca>
Graham Mezzarobba <gmezzaro@acs.ucalgary.ca> writes:

>From my understanding of Grimm's law, the sound changes that occurred in
>Proto-Germanic allow us to follow the language to Proto-Indo-European. and the
>High Germanic Sound shift changes allow us to follow the languages to Dutch,
>Flemish, Friesan, and English.

Grimm's Law is specific to the history of the Germanic languages.  The First
Sound Shift (_die erste Lautverschiebung_) takes us from the traditional PIE
sound system to that of Common Germanic; *this* is the sound system of English,
Frisian, Dutch/Flemish, Saxon (Low German), and so on.  The Second Sound Shift
is restricted to High German dialects, is not total in the same as the first--
that is, for example, there are dialects in which Gmc. *p and *t shift but not
*k--and gives us the sound system of standard German and the like.

>Does this then propose that there is a similar law that will allow us to
>follow Old english to middle english? (I believe so) and: Middle english to
>modern english (I also believe so)

If you mean a systematic shift in voicing or manner of articulation of the
obstruents, no.  If you mean systematic changes of some unspecified sort, then
of course--that's what historical linguistics is all about, determining and
explicating such changes.

>This being the case. there must also be a series of changes that can be done
>to convert Modern english to Friesan and/or Dutch/Flemish.  there will, of
>course, be exceptions with certain words borrowed from other languages, but
>the principle for converting the sounds should be similar to Grimm's law.

Only by going all the way back to Proto-Germanic, then moving forward with all
the changes in the other language.  Further, this ignores the disturbances in
any such pattern of the processes grouped under the heading "analogy"--paradig-
matic leveling, for example, which in English gives us many more "regular" or 
"weak" past tense formations, or the spread of the -s plural formant at the
expense of so many others (compare modern German).

My best recommendation is that you pick up Bynon's _Historical Linguistics_ and
read it cover to cover.

>If I am way off base here, please ignore the following instead of flaming
>away....

>This brings to mind a thread regarding the idea of a world language. If each
>language group used a series of these rules for changing the phonemes, tracing
>backwards/across the Proto-Indo-European language tree, a somewhat universal
>language system could be reached..

>Now, I expect to be way off base, as this seemed too simple to arrive at.  Any
>thoughts?

What you have described is not a universal language, but rather the reconstruc-
tion of Proto-Indo-European, a time-honoured result of two centuries of labour
on the part of hundreds of linguists.  One thing we have learned by doing this
is that the reconstructed language is incomplete--we simply do not have all the
lexicon because in some cases the words simply have not survived in more than
dialect and we cannot reasonably reconstruct them.

Even if we had the entirety of PIE, it would be insufficient for modern commu-
nication.  For example, there is only a single word meaning "metal", applied to
bronze or iron according to the metallurgical level of the culture in which we
find it.  How then do we discuss steel, aluminum, chrome, and so on?  And if
the answer is to invent new words, then we are no longer talking about PIE.
-- 
Rich Alderson   You know the sort of thing that you can find in any dictionary
                of a strange language, and which so excites the amateur philo-
                logists, itching to derive one tongue from another that they
                know better: a word that is nearly the same in form and meaning
                as the corresponding word in English, or Latin, or Hebrew, or
                what not.
                                                --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@netcom.com                               _The Notion Club Papers_
